Honda Uses Pinterest to Drive More Interest

As Pinterest’s popularity grows and grows, so do brands’ involvement in the site. Car giant Honda has now decided to harness the power of Pinterest to drive interest for its website and the new Honda CR-V, with a campaign called Pintermission.

Vehicle Drive

Honda is singling out active Pinterest users and handing some of them $500 to indulge in a “Pintermission” to make a visit to the places they’ve been pinning or pick up some of the retail items they’ve highlighted. Honda is making its CR-V the focus of its first foray into Pinterest because it’s a vehicle with a lot of appeal to women, much like Pinterest itself.

So far, two of the women that have been handed a cheque by Honda are putting the funds toward travel. One’s going to London, the other is headed to Hawaii, according to Lauren Ebner, American Honda Motor Company’s assistant manager of social media. Lauren Said-

“It’s such a fast-growing social-media network and seemed like a really good, different, creative outlet for us and a chance to use a visual medium to promote our cars. We wanted to have the opportunity to put images of our cars on there … as a way to drive people back to our website,” Ebner added. “Most of our images link back to Honda.com, and [users] can find out more about the car that way.”

Female Focus

For the time being, the Honda CR-V will be a focus of “pins” the carmaker initiates, given it has a female-skewed demographic, much like Pinterest.

“The car is definitely targeted toward females,” said Ms. Ebner. “From our research, it seems women are looking for a smaller SUV that drives like a car and has the utility and space they need. … But it’s not a huge truck that a woman like myself doesn’t feel comfortable driving.”

Pinterest, which launched in March 2010, is one of the fastest-growing platforms, reaching 10 million monthly visitors more quickly than Facebook or Twitter did. It ranks among the top 30 U.S. sites by total page views. ComScore has reported that women generate nearly 85% of activity on the site, lingering there for long periods of time, and that its users are upper-income consumers.

Tentative Progress

However, very few automakers have a presence on Pinterest thus far, and even fewer have incorporated Pinterest into their marketing activitites at this point. The most clever execution integrating the platform so far came from Peugeot in Panama, whichrecently ran a Pinterest-based competition to encourage followers on the site. On its page were puzzles depicting different car models, with pieces missing. People could find pieces at the Peugeot Panama Facebook page or website, pin them on their own boards and share it with Peugeot. Completed boards would win prizes.

It’s inevitable that as social media continues to expand, more automotive companies will try to adapt to it and integrate it into their business model.